October 16, at Auburn Auburn 38 Florida 35 IT'S GOOD The Tigers found new respect after Scott Etheridge's field goal lifted them past fourth-ranked Florida

WHEN IT COMES TO AUBURN, it pays to read the fine print. Comb theTigers' box scores, because the team is banned from the tube. Notethe asterisk next to Auburn in the SEC standings, indicating that theTigers are ''not eligible for title.'' And by all means train an eyeon the left biceps of tailback James Bostic, which was on prominentdisplay after the Tigers' 38-35 come-from- behind triumph over No. 4Florida. Hobbling around misty Jordan-Hare Stadium, wearing a T-shirtand paying tribute to the fans, Bostic flashed a tattoo of a panthersurrounded by these faint words: NEVER ENOUGH RESPECT.How could there ever be enough respect for a team that had aNielsen rating of zero and no bowl to play for, yet had gone 7-0 andearned a No. 10 ranking? How could there ever be enough respect forthe five Auburn players from Dillard High in Fort Lauderdale whohad endured ceaseless jawing back home after losing to the Gators thelast two years, but who came through now, when it meant the most?How could there ever be enough for Ace Atkins, a senior defensiveend who entered the game with three career tackles and left with twoking-sized sacks? And what about for placekicker Scott Etheridge,whose decisive 41-yard field goal with 1:21 to play redeemed anearlier miss from 35 yards out?How could there ever be enough respect, finally, for Auburn coachTerry Bowden, who after watching his team nearly disappear into a17-zip black hole, scrapped one game plan for another and remainedupbeat throughout? As a law- school grad, Bowden knows a little aboutfine print, but he has chosen to concentrate on the big picture. ''Iwanted so much for these players to feel the good part in collegefootball,'' he said after the game. ''They haven't felt that in awhile.''On a shelf in Bowden's office are a pair of white-and-orangesneakers, size 20. They were sent to him by a fan with a note thatreminded Bowden of the magnitude of the shoes he had stepped into.Before Pat Dye resigned as Auburn coach last November, he had broughtthe Tigers to national prominence. But the 37-year-old Bowden eagerlyput his size-8's in Dye's footprints. During successful coachingstints at smaller schools, Bowden had been steeling himself for justsuch a Division I-A opportunity. ''Besides,'' he says, ''I'd had someexperience filling big shoes.''Just for the record, Terry is better educated, slightly plumperand far less folksy than his father. Though Terry has a keen feel foroffensive play- calling, he has not swamped his game plans withreverses and rooskies like his dad; the kind of player he had atAuburn this season thrives on a blue- collar, power-I team. Terrysees being Bobby's boy for the advantage it is. ''Every time FloridaState's on national TV, it's talked about, how both the Bowdens areunbeaten,'' Terry says. ''So we've gotten a lot of exposure out ofthe relationship.''A more likely heir to Bowden pere -- at least in terms ofoffensive inventiveness -- is the Gators' fourth-year coach, SteveSpurrier. Against Auburn, Spurrier's Fun 'N' Gun attack put up itsusual gaudy numbers: 560 yards in total offense, 196 coming on 22carries by senior running back Errict Rhett. And the Florida defense,prone to surrendering large strikes, yielded % no gain of more than23 yards, while limiting Auburn's reliable running game to just 116yards.In the end, the Gators were undone by a handful of costly mistakesand by an opponent that didn't lose its composure or its faith -- orthe football. This was the seventh time in seven tries that aSpurrier-coached Florida team had lost to a ranked team on the road.Said Rhett after the Auburn game, ''I'm still trying to figure outwhat happened.''It all started out according to form. Thanks to the soft passingtouch and prescient reads of freshman quarterback Danny Wuerffel, theGators were appropriately lively 'n' lethal, taking a quick 10-0 leadand driving again with a minute left in the first quarter. Wuerffel'scause had been abetted by the Dillard High Five, three of whom arestarters in the Tigers' defensive secondary; they were out ofposition more than once.''We were too eager,'' said strong safety Otis Mounds. A redshirtjunior, Mounds was the first of the Fort Lauderdale bunch to sign onwith Auburn; Dye had continued to recruit him even after Moundsserved 10 months in a Florida correctional institution for dealingcrack. Dye's loyalty impressed four of Mounds's schoolmates --Bostic, cornerback Calvin Jackson, free safety Brian Robinson andwideout Frank Sanders -- who followed Mounds's lead the next year.''Most schools wouldn't look at Otis because of his past,'' saysJackson. ''It really gave me the feeling that Auburn cared.''Against Florida the Dillard gang began to assert itself on asecond-down play for the Gators at the Auburn 10. Wuerffel's pass,intended for wide receiver Willie Jackson, who was in the end zone,instead found Calvin Jackson at the four, and the Tiger cornerbackhad a clear stretch of green in front of him. Touchdown. That made it10-7, Florida, instead of 17-0. The game was on.Bowden's battle plan at the outset had called for long drives fullof running plays to keep the ball out of the Gators' hands. ''But ifthey get up two touchdowns,'' Bowden had said, ''I'm not sure we havethe sort of team that can come back.'' Bowden was entitled to hisdoubt: The combined record of Auburn's first six opponents was 13-19.By halftime the Tigers had had five possessions, rushed 13 times andgained just 12 yards. Florida had owned the ball seven times andscored five times -- and led 27-14.Wuerffel was being supplied with ample time to take his three-stepdrop, find the open man and deliver. But that changed in the secondhalf when Atkins nailed Wuerffel twice to stop two Gator drives.The son of late Auburn great Billy Atkins, the 213-pound Ace haswritten an unpublished spy novel and studied taekwondo, but he hadnot made a tackle all season. ''I've never been a part of a game likethis one,'' he said afterward. ''It was like a movie. I don't thinkthat Hollywood or Robert Altman could have scripted it better forus.''Meanwhile, Bowden junked his pregame strategy and went to the air,with quarterback Stan White hitting Sanders on intermediate routes toset up the run. White finished with 23 completions in 35 attempts for267 yards. ''We're not a team that's going to go out and throw 50times, like Florida,'' said White. ''We've got a balanced attack.''Auburn's revised game plan loosened up the Gator defensivebackfield and created a bit of room for Bostic, who may be the mostfiercely aggressive ball carrier on any team anywhere in the land.Bostic has a sweet disposition off the field, but on it, he runsas if each carry were his last. That may partly explain the 76 yardshe gained on 17 attempts against a Florida defense stacked to stophim and the four-yard touchdown he scored with 13:40 left in thefourth quarter to give Auburn its first lead, 28-27. Onfourth-and-one, White pitched to Bostic, who faced two problems: 1)He had no blockers, and 2) Florida linebacker Dexter Daniels had bothhands on him three yards behind the line of scrimmage. But Bosticblasted through Daniels's grasp -- if not Daniels himself -- and intothe end zone. ''I wasn't going to let him tackle me,'' Bostic said.''I had my second effort.''The fifth member of the Dillard gang, Robinson, was heard fromthree series later. A blitzing Robinson forced Wuerffel to float apass that Tiger cornerback Chris Shelling picked off and returned 65yards, setting up a nine- yard touchdown on a reverse by Sanders tomake the score 35-27, Auburn. Florida responded by marching 81 yardsto tie the game with 5:44 left.On Auburn's next possession White's pass on third-and-eight fromhis own 42 sailed high, and the Tigers seemed to have stalled withbarely four minutes left to play. But Gator safety Lawrence Wrighthad nailed the intended receiver, Sanders, out of bounds, and the15-yard personal-foul penalty kept the Auburn drive alive forEtheridge's kick. ''I'm putting this loss on my shoulders,'' Wrightsaid later.Among his fellows from Fort Lauderdale, Sanders is an anomaly.Unlike Bostic ( with his panther or Mounds with his cat or Robinsonwith his tiger or Jackson with his eight ball (witch's clawattached), Sanders has no tattoo. ''I'm the one who knows what to dowith money,'' he says. ''Otis probably has two, three hundred dollarsin tattoos on his body.'' In addition, Sanders admits that afterwatching Florida's four-wideout sets and wide-open attack, he hasoccasional pangs of regret about having chosen Auburn. ''That's areceiver's dream right there,'' he says of the Gator offense.But the pangs, like the Tigers, eventually pass. ''A lot of peoplethought we made a bad decision to come here,'' Sanders said after thegame. ''But this shows Auburn is a great program.'' Besides droppingFlorida to 5-1 and dampening its national championship hopes,Auburn's victory paved the way for some verbal payback by the Dillardgang come summertime. One of the primary targets of that retributionwill be Rhett, who is known for his nonstop chatter. ''Those fiveguys live right down the street from me,'' Rhett lamented. ''Nowthey've got bragging rights, and I don't have another chance to playagainst Auburn.''In some respects the NCAA probation has been a plus for theTigers; they remained relatively free of expectations. ''That's thepositive -- you can relax a little,'' said Bowden. ''The negative is,the closer you get to having a good season, the more you realize whatthey have taken away from you.''